Blogging Volumes

 Did you make any jokes, last night, about the world ending? I know I did. In the kitchen, I said to my dad that I'd bought some vegan hot dogs "as a treat, in honour of the impending nuclear apocalypse." Whether vegan hot dogs constitute a worthy final meal is beside the point - my joke was met with a reply in the same vein: "Oh, I forgot that was on tonight! I think we're watching something else." What does it mean, that we react in this way? Is it a case of 'laughing through the pain,' or is it something more sinister? *** In her book  In the Ruins of Neoliberalism , Wendy Brown writes that Western society is becoming increasingly nihilistic. Written in 2019, the book charts something which has only gotten more relevant since: "When a Martin Luther King Jr. speech about public service is used to advertise Dodge trucks during the Super Bowl, when Catholic clergy are revealed to have molested thousands of children while their superiors looked a...

 Famines are always man-made. This fact has been recognised at least as far back as the Victorian era; famines are never merely about a lack of access to food - they're about the active withholding of access to food, from one group of people, by another. And no famine in history has been more obviously manufactured than Israel's famine in Gaza, in which thousands of tonnes of food sit hundreds of meters away from scenes like this:  There are literally tens of thousands of trucks waiting to get food into Gaza. One phone call from Donald Trump could get them in. One order from Netanyahu could get them in. Israel, the US, and Israel's 'allies' (a better word would be accomplices ) in Europe, have chosen every day since October 9th 2023 to withhold food and water from an entire population. And this isn't the first time for Israel. Back in 2005, Israel launched Operation 'First Rain' on the people of Gaza. As the Israeli-British historian Ilan Pappé writes: ...

 "A land without people, for a people without a land": this was the dream for Israel, advocated for by Zionists as far back as the late 1800s. This single statement encapsulates the inherently genocidal logic (and the counterintuitive justification) used to construct a state of Israel on Palestinian territory. The land was populated by hundreds of thousands of people before the first European settlers moved there; very much not a "land without people". And as for the "people without a land", not only did most Jewish people have no interest at all in the creation of an Israeli state, many were actively opposed to it: the Jewish people, more than many other ethnic groups worldwide, knew first-hand where ethnonationalism leads, and wanted no part in it. On these two lies - that Palestine was "without people", and that it should become a Jewish ethno-state - Europe (led by Britain) founded the state of Israel. That state will use any means necessary ...

 We are going to have to sort this out. The plague of gender-bending perverts infiltrating our nation's bathrooms has gone on for too long. Women need protection. And I think the best way to provide that protection is to have national genitalia inspections by police officers. Now, as we all know, sexual assault occurs exclusively in public toilets. They are sites of national shame; one shivers to walk past a public toilet, knowing that in all likelihood, a trans person is in there, doing unspeakable things to innocent (biological) men and (biological) women. I've lost many friends to the dank dens of festering injustice that constitute gender-neutral bathrooms, whose existence I cannot accept - apart from in the case of disabled bathrooms (for as we all know, disabled people, the poor things, do not have either gender or sex, and so are safe to use the same uni-gender bathroom together).  It should go without saying that bathroom cleaners also have no gender, and should contin...

 Sir Kier Starmer, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, hath proclaimed across the Kingdom that there shall be a reduction in the pay given to the feeble and the sick. He hath come to this decision amid a time of great plenty; that new title 'billionaire' is claimed by three thousand men across the globe, five-and-fifty of whom live in our United Kingdom itself. The time has come to impose tithes on the great Robber-Barons of the world: Amazon, Meta, Google - and yet, as we have come to expect, the great burden of taxation falls hardest on the peasantry. Sir Starmer's Knighthood For many years now, we have laboured under the weight of ever-growing levies: the Water Lords, the Energy Lords, and the Land Lords demand from us poor vassals a monthly stipend, in exchange for the continuation of our own lives. There are those who still maintain that such taxes are voluntary arrangements within a system of Free Trade - that we are 'free to choose' which Lord will pro...

 It should go without saying: this election result is really bad, actually. Kamala Harris, proud supporter of ongoing genocide though she may be, enthusiastic participant in the police state and generally vapid vessel for status-quo Democratic complacency though she may be... she's not a rapist with an endorsement from the KKK . In fact, her entire campaign, based stupidly, fatally, on the one selling point - "I'm not Trump" - does at least highlight the raw fact that Trump is indeed a particularly repulsive bit of bile for the American electorate to spew up into the blood-soaked walls of the "White House". Those who voted for Harris as a means to avoid the full-blown meltdown of democratic order Trump will inevitably unleash are not, actually, all terrible people who don't care a jot for the lives of Palestinians - many will be principled and active organisers against Israel who simply fear for what will happen to trans people, migrants, all women in Am...

 Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon is sunbathing in Cyprus. Once invited to address the Oxford Union , the millionaire (who now goes by the name 'Tommy Robinson') is lounging in a five-star hotel, scrolling through his phone, sending messages to thousands of ardent followers. He had fled the UK after breaching a court order, after losing a libel battle in 2021. This wealthy, powerful, criminal terrorist, fleeing supposed political persecution in his home country in order to reap the benefits of a safer place abroad, is a figurehead of the anti-Muslim violence currently burning across the UK. He doesn't speak the local language, he's got a history of criminally stalking and harassing a woman , assaulting a police officer, and his libel case was against a 15 year-old. Naturally, this man, and all his followers, believe that powerful foreign terrorists are a great danger to our children, and that the best way to protect women is to close borders. Were the government of Cyp...

About a week ago, I got a knock on the door. A man from the Labour party was here to ask if I'd given any thought to who I'd be voting for in the upcoming general election. I said "Green, this time." The man said, "I see - and had you maybe thought about why you're not giving your vote to Labour?" "I'm more on the Corbyn side of the party than the Starmer side, politically," I replied. The man looked about to give a pre-prepared response, and then stopped. He sighed, shook his head, and said: "Me too..." And this appears to be where the British Left stands, in the run-up to the election. On the one side, those ready to vote for a party who are currently throwing everything they've got at electing just  4 MPs into parliament; and on the other side, disillusioned Corbyn supporters suddenly stating that principles don't matter as much as winning elections. This election is about 'stopping the Tories'; the problem is, ...

 A few weeks ago, I went to the protest encampment on Newcastle University's campus, to sit, chant, listen and add another face to the group. Students were occupying a green space outside the King's Gate building (where students receive therapy, other forms of support, and where a student from the encampment was deliberately injured by a member of staff when they tried to set up a meeting with the Chancellor of the university, Chris Day). The group behind the encampment, Apartheid Off Campus Ncl , has three key demands: that the university disclose all investments with companies currently targeted by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; that the university divests from those companies and ceases all connection to them; and that they protect the students' right to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. They also ask that the university makes a formal pledge regarding these things, and that they call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Absolutely all of these deman...

Content warnings: discussion of suicide, self-harm, grief, genocide Don't set yourself on fire. The act of self-immolation as a form of political protest has a long history, and in recent months, some people have committed suicide by fire in response to the genocide in Gaza. Every single one of these people deserves immense respect for their empathy, for their integrity, and their commitment to standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine.  But I've been in a protest group where two young people set themselves on fire for the cause, and this kind of protest cannot be valorised. The romanticisation of self-sacrifice leads to nothing but grief. We must find a way to appreciate and acknowledge the sincerity of those who self-immolate for a political message, while strictly dissuading any further acts of suicide. This is for a very simple reason: unnecessary violence cannot end unnecessary violence. There are compelling arguments as to why violence, in many circumstances, is...

I almost certainly now have more books than I have life remaining to read them in. My laptop looks back at me beneath a shelf of books; to my right, three full shelves, labelled, from top to bottom, 'Activism', 'Plays' and 'Writing' struggle under the weight of more books; behind me, two more, taller sets of shelves carry my science, sci-fi, philosophy, history, biography, and some random books. On top of my wardrobe sits a large, stuffed tub of books I've read already. And then there's all the books downstairs. I've annexed most walls of my family's dining room for my volumes on politics, all my general fiction, and my poetry. There's also a few hardbacks that wouldn't fit anywhere else. The defence "well at least I don't smoke" is becoming less and less effective. The cliché line of most addicts is: "I can quit any time I want." I'm not even going to try that one. I can't quit. I will pile up books until ...